A new “opinion” article posted on CNN’s website Wednesday morning blamed the U.S. for “accepting the rage of white men” and instigating gun violence.
Of course, the title of the piece in and of itself is completely racist -- but don’t tell that to CNN, who apparently firmly believe that white people can’t be targets of racism.
Naaz Modan, the author and a content editor for the website Muslim Girl, wrote the piece attempting to prove “how America has silently accepted the rage of white men," at one point writing:
In fact, America has been here 273 times in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles deaths and injuries from shooting incidents and defines a mass shooting as any incident where four or more people are wounded or killed. According to their tally, there have also been 11,698 deaths as a result of gun violence so far this year. Between 2001 and 2014, 440,095 deaths by firearms occurred on US soil, while deaths by terrorism during those years numbered 3,412. Today, America faces approximately one mass shooting per day on average.
The problem with Modan’s use of large numbers, used ostensibly to scare people into her way of thinking, is that she gives absolutely no breakdown of each statistic. On top of that, her source, the Gun Violence Archive, also uses questionable tactics to beef up their numbers, such as equating gang violence in Chicago with mass shootings like that in Las Vegas. While both cases involve guns, that’s where the comparison ends.
While Modan claims that 440,095 died from gunshots between 2001 and 2014, she fails to mention that nearly two-thirds of all U.S. gun deaths are from suicide. A large portion of the remainder were from accidental discharge or gang-related violence, according to the same 2014 Centers for Disease Control report that Modan referenced.
For Modan to equate the numbers she uses with the number of mass shootings is irresponsible, as is her comparison of firearm-related deaths to the number of deaths as a result of terrorism (which, to Modan, isn’t nearly the problem that guns seem to be).
Where Modan loses the plot is when she links mass shootings with white people based on an investigation done by the liberal website Mother Jones.
However, Modan only cites “62 mass shootings” from 1982-2012, whereas the study includes figures all the way until present day, including the Las Vegas mass shooting. While Modan claims there have been 273 mass shootings in 2017, she then cites Mother Jones' "mass shooting" numbers, which only lists seven mass shootings in 2017.
Modan then asserts that "this is a white man’s problem."
Too bad the numbers tell a different story.
According to U.S. News & World Report, which cited FBI data, white people are much more likely to be killed by blacks than blacks are to be killed by whites.
The report stated that “500 killings of white people” were “attributed to blacks” in 2015. Meanwhile, “229 black lives” were “taken by white killers” in 2015.
In data that included information of both the victim and killer, “15.8 percent of of white victims were killed by blacks last year [2015], and 8.6 percent of black victims were killed by whites.”
It shouldn’t be this easy to debunk an article on a major news organizations’ website, but it was. Then again, it's been an awfully long time since we could count on the media to actually do their jobs.